NEWS
Wallowa County Chieftain
A16
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Longhorn Espresso, etc., has new owners
BIZZ BUZZ
By Bill Bradshaw
The Longhorn Espresso may have
changed hands, but it isn’t going anywhere.
“It’s the same old same old, just with new
faces,” said the co-owner, Amanda Rahn.
She and husband, Brian Rahn, pur-
chased the drive-through coffee shop and the
accompanying Enterprise Laundromat and
Car Wash late last year and their fi rst day as
the new owners was Thanksgiving Day.
They plan to keep all three businesses —
located at 210 W Greenwood Ave. in Enter-
prise — operating. While theirs is not the
only coffee/espresso shop or drive-through
car wash in town, it is the only laundromat.
Amanda acknowledges that customers
could drive to Joseph or Wallowa to do laun-
dry, but for many it would be impractical.
“A lot of the clients couldn’t do that,”
she said. They don’t have the mode of
transportation.”
Therefore, the coin-op laundromat and
the coin-op or credit-card car wash will con-
tinue as in the past.
So will the espresso shop, they said.
“We’re trying to keep it like Toni had
it,” Amanda said, referring to the previous
owners Toni and Keith Leech. “We’ve been
Bill Bradshaw
Brian and Amanda Rahn, the new owners of Longhorn Espresso in Enterprise, stand in the coff ee
shop awaiting customers Thursday, Jan. 2. The couple bought the business Thanksgiving Day.
longtime clients of this place. That made it
easy to step in.”
In addition to coffee and espresso drinks,
Longhorn Espresso serves what Amanda
calls a “grab-and-go breakfast” consisting
of sausage or bacon sandwiches, cinnamon
rolls, a bacon-cheddar scone and some pro-
tein-packed oatmeal. Brian said they may, in
Solar power from ‘the dark side’
unlocked by a new formula
WEST LAFAYETTE,
Ind. — Most of today’s
solar panels capture sun-
light and convert it to elec-
tricity only from the side
facing the sky. If the dark
underside of a solar panel
could also convert sunlight
refl ected off the ground,
even more electricity might
be generated.
Double-sided solar cells
are already enabling pan-
els to sit vertically on land
or rooftops and even hor-
izontally as the canopy of
a gas station, but it hasn’t
been known exactly how
much electricity these pan-
els could ultimately gener-
ate or the money they could
save.
A new thermodynamic
formula reveals that the
bifacial cells making up
double-sided panels gener-
ate on average 15% to 20%
more sunlight to electricity
than the monofacial cells of
today’s one-sided solar pan-
els, taking into consider-
ation different terrain such
as grass, sand, concrete and
dirt.
The formula, developed
by two Purdue University
physicists, can be used for
calculating in minutes the
most electricity that bifacial
solar cells could generate in
a variety of environments,
as defi ned by a thermody-
namic limit.
“The formula involves
just a simple triangle, but
distilling the extremely
complicated physics prob-
lem to this elegantly sim-
ple formulation required
years of modeling and
research. This triangle will
help companies make better
decisions on investments
in next-generation solar
cells and fi gure out how
to design them to be more
effi cient,” said Muhammad
“Ashraf” Alam, Purdue’s
Jai N. Gupta Professor of
Electrical and Computer
Engineering.
Capital Press
Companies are moving toward installing more double-sided
solar panels, such as this one functioning as the canopy of a
Shell gas station in Atlanta, Georgia. A new formula reveals
exactly how much more electricity double-sided panels can
generate compared to conventional single-sided panels,
helping to better inform how the panels are designed.
In a paper published
in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sci-
ences, Alam and co-author
Ryyan Khan, now an assis-
tant professor at East West
University in Bangladesh,
also show how the formula
can be used to calculate the
thermodynamic limits of all
solar cells developed in the
last 50 years. These results
can be generalized to tech-
nology likely to be devel-
oped over the next 20 to 30
years.
The hope is that these
calculations would help
solar farms to take full
advantage of bifacial cells
earlier in their use.
“It took almost 50 years
for monofacial cells to
show up in the fi eld in a
cost-effective way,” Alam
said. “The technology
has been remarkably suc-
cessful, but we know now
that we can’t signifi cantly
increase their effi ciency
anymore or reduce the cost.
Our formula will guide and
accelerate the development
of bifacial technology on a
faster time scale.”
The paper might have
gotten the math settled just
in time: Experts estimate
that by 2030, bifacial solar
cells will account for nearly
half of the market share for
solar panels worldwide.
Alam’s
approach
is called the “Shock-
ley-Queisser
triangle,”
since it builds upon pre-
dictions made by research-
ers William Shockley and
Hans-Joachim Queisser on
the maximum theoretical
effi ciency of a monofacial
solar cell. This maximum
point, or the thermody-
namic limit, can be identi-
fi ed on a downward sloping
line graph that forms a tri-
angle shape.
The formula shows that
the effi ciency gain of bifa-
cial solar cells increases
with light refl ected from a
surface. Signifi cantly more
power would be converted
from light refl ected off
of concrete, for example,
compared to a surface with
vegetation.
The researchers use the
formula to recommend bet-
ter bifacial designs for pan-
els on farmland and the
windows of buildings in
densely populated cities.
Transparent,
dou-
ble-sided panels allow
solar power to be gener-
ated on farmland with-
out casting shadows that
would block crop produc-
tion. Meanwhile, creating
bifacial windows for build-
ings would help cities to use
more renewable energy.
The paper also recom-
mends ways to maximize
the potential of bifacial cells
by manipulating the num-
ber of boundaries between
semiconductor materials,
called junctions, that facil-
itate the fl ow of electricity.
Bifacial cells with single
junctions provide the larg-
est effi ciency gain relative
to monofacial cells.
“The relative gain is
small, but the absolute gain
is signifi cant. You lose the
initial relative benefi t as
you increase the number
of junctions, but the abso-
lute gain continues to rise,”
Khan said.
The formula, detailed in
the paper, has been thor-
oughly validated and is
ready for companies to
use as they decide how to
design bifacial cells.
This research was par-
tially supported by the
National Science Founda-
tion under award 1724728.
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the future, add some types of protein smooth-
ies, depending on what the public likes.
Amanda said the Leeches, who ran the
businesses for about 15 years, wanted to
retire and put the businesses on the market.
The Rahns, on the other hand, were look-
ing to expand their holdings. The couple
are the third generation to own Rahn Sani-
tary Service in Enterprise. It was founded in
1951 by Brian’s grandfather, Johnny Rahn.
Brian’s dad, Mike Rahn, took over in the
mid-1970s and Brian and Amanda took the
helm a few years ago, Brian said.
But Longhorn Espresso, the laundromat
and car wash are a separate operation.
“This is just a personal investment for us
and our kids,” Amanda said. The couple has
three daughters — 6 to 9 years old.
As for the future, the couple is confi dent.
“We just hope with the community’s sup-
port we’ll be able to keep the businesses
going and have a great future,” Brian said.
“We’re just new into it so it’s going to be a
bit of excitement as we see what people like
and go from there.”
Longhorn Espresso is open Monday
through Saturday, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sun-
day, from 7 a.m. to noon. The laundromat
is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to
7 p.m. and the car wash is open 24/7, except
when the weather is too cold for it to operate.
For more information, call 426-3306 or
visit their Facebook page.
U.S. trend toward more
processed foods may
mean more obesity
Leigh A. Frame
George Washington
University
As food consumed in
the U.S. becomes more and
more processed, obesity may
become more prevalent.
Through reviewing over-
all trends in food, George
Washington
University
researcher Leigh A. Frame,
Ph.D., MHS, concluded that
detailed recommendations
to improve diet quality and
overall nutrition are needed
for consumers, who are pri-
oritizing food that is cheaper
and more convenient, but
also highly processed. Her
conclusions are published
in a review article in Cur-
rent Treatment Options in
Gastroenterology.
“When comparing the
U.S. diet to the diet of those
who live in “blue zones”
— areas with populations
living to age 100 without
chronic disease — the dif-
ferences are stark,” said
Frame, co-author of the arti-
cle, program director for the
Integrative Medicine Pro-
grams, executive director
of the Offi ce of Integrative
Medicine and Health, and
assistant professor of clini-
cal research and leadership
at the GW School of Med-
icine and Health Sciences.
“Many of the food trends we
reviewed are tied directly to
a fast-paced U.S. lifestyle
that contributes to the obe-
sity epidemic we are now
facing.”
The rising obesity epi-
demic in the U.S., as well
as related chronic diseases,
are correlated with a rise
in ultra-processed food
consumption.
The foods most asso-
ciated with weight gain
include potato chips, sugar
sweetened
beverages,
sweets and desserts, refi ned
grains, red meats, and pro-
cessed meats, while lower
weight gain or even weight
loss is associated with whole
grains, fruits, and vegeta-
bles. Other food trends out-
lined in the report include
insuffi cient dietary fi ber
intake, a dramatic increase
in food additives like emul-
sifi ers and gums, and a
Wikipedia Commons
Snack foods and other
processed and ultra processed
foods have been found to
contribute to obesity.
higher prevalence of obesity,
particularly in women.
In mice and in vitro tri-
als, emulsifi ers, found
in processed foods, have
been found to alter micro-
biome compositions, ele-
vate fasting blood glucose,
cause hyperphagia, increase
weight gain and adipos-
ity and induce hepatic ste-
atosis. Recent human trials
have linked ultra-processed
foods to decreased satiety
(fullness), increased meal
eating rates (speed), wors-
ening biochemical markers,
including infl ammation and
cholesterol and more weight
gain.
In contrast, populations
with low meat, high fi ber,
and minimally processed
foods — the “blue zones”
— have far less chronic dis-
eases, obesity rates, and live
longer disease-free.
“Rather than solely treat-
ing the symptoms of obe-
sity and related diseases
with medication, we need to
include efforts to use food
as medicine,” Frame said.
“Chronic disease in later
years is not predestined, but
heavily infl uenced by life-
style and diet. Decreasing
obesity and chronic disease
in the U.S. will require lim-
iting processed foods and
increasing intake of whole
vegetables, legumes, nuts,
fruits and water. Health care
providers must also empha-
size lifestyle medicine, mov-
ing beyond ‘a pill for an ill.’”